Brian Beacom: Baby Boomers deserve praise for surviving Barbarella

IT’S a strange feeling to wake up to the belief you are indeed a Special One, even if not quite a Mourinho. Now, before you assume this declaration to be down to a surge of smugness (I did get to sing a James Taylor song with the best-looking Nolan sister at a weekend party) that’s not the reason. It’s because the living standards think-tank, The Resolution Foundation are arguing that Baby Boomers (born 1946–1966) are the chosen people.

It seems we are set to receive 20 per cent more state support than we chipped in. The next generation, those in their 30s and 40s are up by just five per cent and the Millennials are big-time losers. As a result, they’re screaming out at us BBs in Harold Macmillan voices, “You’ve never had it so good.”

But do we deserve the opprobrium? The young blame us by stating the state their lives are in, given they’ll have to live with their parents ’till they’re as old as Granville. Well, is that such a bad thing? Free breakfasts are great and you’ll hit middle age before using the washing machine.

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Millennials are bemoaning the fact we had the benefit of a fully functioning health service back then, that MRSA hadn’t taken hold, we had specialists who didn’t have to be dragged away from private clinic sidelines, and we grew our own nurses – and we didn’t pay them through a middle man. But what they don’t factor in is that Sixties’ hospitals were tough places to be sick in. Wards stank of bleach and staff nurses were Hattie Jacques stern – and had your mum out the ward the second the second bell rang.

The young will even argue we’ve had the best of times, culturally, the soundtracks of our lives provided by Bowie and the Beatles and Sergeant Pepper – while they’ve got Olly Murs. Well, that’s fair; but did they ever have to listen to George Harrison’s sitar track Within You, Without You? And do they fully appreciate how hard it was to pretend to like Genesis?

There are more cultural blackspots we had to skid through. Yes, we had great movies, anything featuring Tom Courtenay or Shirley MacLaine . And all young people have nowadays are films starring a Ryan or a Jessica. But back then there was no Netflix, or box sets, just three TV stations and the heart-sinker announcement “Except for viewers in Scotland.” Sometimes, we had to talk and read newspapers just to survive. Yes, we had Steptoe, but Millennials didn’t have to endure Hughie Green and sitcom prattle about Mrs Slocombe’s pussy.

And that brings us to the sexism which wouldn’t be allowed these days. How hard do you think it was for a pubescent boy in the late Sixties to see Raquel Welch in a fur bikini, or Jane Fonda’s orgasmic Barbarella blow up the Pleasure Machine? It was an awful, unwarranted assault on our very sensibilities.

Millennials also point out we continually complain “You’re never off that phone” but that’s just our sheer jealousy, given that phoning a prospective girlfriend once involved stuffing a corduroy pocket with so much coinage the stitching would give way. And we never had Tinders or Grinders; swiping only occurred when taking a soft shoe brush across a scuffed Chelsea boot prior to venturing in the direction of Valentino’s in Paisley, where we had to speak to those we fancied.

The Millennials of course assume we enjoyed the advent of the sexual revolution. Yet, they don’t appreciate our courtships sometimes lasted a year BC. (Before Congress). And the Pill wasn’t freely prescribed in Scotland in the Seventies, unless for spotty faces, which meant praying to the great gods of acne.

Yes, in one way it was easier for working class Boomers to go to university: grants, earnings related schemes, etc. But do they appreciate the peer pressure students faced in the late Seventies to wear a donkey jacket, even in the summer? And yes, back then the Scottish education system was the envy of the world, and now it wears the UK dunce’s cap. But nowadays everyone gets ‘As’ in Highers.

You Millennials may tell us to shut our bus pass-heating allowance-Maureen Nolan-flaunting faces and throw zero hours contracts, multinational tax avoidance, last year’s £58bn national debt and Jacob Rees Mogg back at us.

You may point out we’re the generation that wrecked the ozone, linoleumed lovely hardwood floors and dumped vintage furniture for flat pack.

But here’s the thing; snowflakey Millennials don’t often buy newspapers so you can take your smooth, taut skin and your lustrous hair and blithe confidence of youth and get lost. Unless you’re reading this online. In which case I love you guys.

Come to think of it, I do. Come to think of it, stories appearing about the BBs being 20 per cent better off is all part of the divide and conquer narrative running through society.

So instead of focusing on a past that can’t be altered, focus on the growing income disparity that can pay university rectors £400k and Motability (a charity) bosses up to £1.7m a year. Don’t make the Boomers apologists for the time frame they popped out in. And let me feel a little bit smug.

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